Snowy Cancellation of 'Sunday Night Football' Sinks NBC

Fox won a particularly quiet Sunday when much of the Northeast was socked in by a snowstorm, prompting the NFL to cancel the Philadelphia Eagles-Minnesota Vikings game that would have aired on NBC’s Sunday Night Football.

Reruns of Fox’s animated comedies The Simpsons (2.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 6.3 million viewers overall), The Cleveland Show (2.2, 4.8 million) and Family Guy (2.5, 5.2 million) propelled the network to the win for the night. And overrun of the Fox Sports’ coverage of the New York Giants-Green Bay Packers game early in Sunday primetime was apparently more than enough to offset the anemic tune-in for Running Wilde (1.3, 2.9 million) at 9:30 p.m. The network averaged a 3.1 with 8.2 million viewers overall.

CBS, which had reruns of Undercover Boss (1.8, 8.4 million), CSI: Miami (1.4, 6.8 million) and The Mentalist (1.5, 7.3 million), was first among total viewers averaging 8.5 million (with a 1.6 rating). At 7 p.m., CBS’ 60 Minutes, which got a hefty lead-in from the New York Jets-Chicago Bears game, scored a 1.9 with 11.7 million viewers.

Without Sunday Night Football, NBC was tied with ABC for third in the demo (1.4 rating each) with its NFL pre-game show Football Night in America, which the network ran in spite of the game cancellation, managing a 1.7 with 5.6 million viewers, followed by reruns of Minute to Win It (1.4, 4.3 million) and Law & Order: SVU (1.2, 3.7 million).

ABC, which had the Julie Andrews classic The Sound of Music, was third among total viewers (6.2 million).